News and analysis on politics, human rights and civil society in Latin America by Geoffrey Ramsey

Monday, April 14, 2014

Anti-Fumigation Fight Sees Tactical Victory in Colombia

Colombia’s top administrative court has
struck down a controversial program authorizing coca fumigation in national
parks. While authorities say fumigation in protected areas was rare anyway, the
ruling comes amid growing skepticism about aerial spraying and could hasten its
demise.

On March 31, the Colombian Council of State
announced that it had decided that spraying in national reserves contributed to
a loss of natural vegetation and irreparable damage to the environment. The main target of the ruling was glyphosate,
the pesticide most frequently used for coca eradication. Citing inconclusive
evidence about the health and environmental safety of glyphosate, the tribunal
found that spraying in protected areas could not be justified under the precautionary
principle of policymaking.

In response to the decision, Colombian drug
control officials downplayed its significance. Ricardo Restrepo, head of the
country’s anti-narcotics police, told
the AP that his office “had never” sprayed in natural reserves, pointing to
two parks where they have refrained from acting.

Nevertheless, the decision appears to be
part of a trend, as more officials in the country turn against the practice. In
October, the Colombian government agreed
to pay $15 million to Ecuador to compensate for health problems caused
to Ecuadorean farmers by glyphosate spraying along the border as part of an
aerial coca eradication campaign. The agreement sparked controversy in
Colombia, where the government was accused of holding the Ecuadorean border
region to
higher standards than the rest of the country.

In a visit to Washington last month, Colombian
Justice Minister Alfonso Gómez Méndez asked
his U.S. counterparts to reconsider allocating funds for coca eradication, proposing
that they be used instead to address “the causes of illicit cultivation.”

As Just the Facts’ Adam Isaacson has noted,
however, the government is not unified on the issue. Officials in the National
Police and Defense Ministry have stepped up
praise for U.S.-supported fumigation programs, in direct response to the
government’s signaled openness towards cutting them.

While the Council of State ruling only
applied to spraying in certain protected areas, it is still a significant blow
to the arguments in favor of fumigation. As Rodrigo Uprimny of the Bogota-based
Dejusticia research center argued in a Saturday column for El
Espectador, the same argument used by the court applies to spraying in
general. He writes:

In this judgment, the Council of State
cancels a resolution authorizing spraying in national parks, for violating [precautionary
principle, or] PP. One might think, then, that the sentence only impacts
spraying in those areas. But this is not the case. For procedural reasons, the council
could only invalidate that resolution, because it was the norm in question;
however, its doctrine on the PP is broader and attacks the legal grounds for
spraying, as the damage to human health and fragile, rich ecosystems do not
occur in national parks alone.

News Briefs

El
Espectador looks at a forward-thinking needle exchange program underway in
the central Colombian city of Pereira, which supplies users of injectable drugs
with clean needles as part of an effort to cut down on HIV and hepatitis
transmission. The paper also notes that the program, which has support of international
harm reduction advocacy organizations like the Open Society Foundations, stands
in stark contrast to President Juan Manuel’s recent efforts to crack down on
low-level drug trafficking by demolishing
houses accused of links to “microtrafficking” in a northeast Bogota slum.

Even as certain Venezuelan opposition
sectors remain
critical of talks with the government, the opposition Democratic Unity
Roundtable (MUD) has announced the makeup of its delegation to continued talks.
While the government’s side will be represented by Foreign Minister Elias Jaua,
Libertador Mayor Jorge Rodriguez and Vice President Jorge Arreaza, El
Universal reports that the MUD will be represented by deputy MUD Secretary
Ramon Jose Medina and five opposition lawmakers. The first round these talks is set to begin tomorrow.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is
having a tough time in her first month back in office. On Saturday, she had to
face the second emergency of her young second term, following the 8.2
earthquake on April 1. A major fire swept through the hills of the port city of
Valparaiso, leaving
at least 12 dead and forcing authorities to evacuate some 10,000 to
evacuate. La
Tercera reports that Bachelet has postponed her first planned overseas trip
this week -- official visits to Argentina and Uruguay -- in order to coordinate
disaster efforts.

According to El
Universo, Ecuadorean environmental groups presented some 700 thousand
signatures to electoral authorities on Saturday in favor of holding a national
referendum on President Rafael Correa's decision to end restrictions on oil
drilling Yasuni National Park. BBC
Mundo has an excellent profile of the coalition behind the pro-referendum
effort, which is made up primarily of young people disenchanted by Correa’s environmental
policies.

Imprisoned former USAID contractor Alan Gross
ended
his hunger strike on Friday, reportedly in response to a request from his 91-year-old
mother. According to a statement from his lawyer, Gross said similar protests
would not be needed in the future as long as both the U.S. and Cuban
governments “show more concern for human beings and less malice and derision
toward each other.”

Frank Bajak of the Associated Press chronicles
the phenomenon of “subnational
authoritarianism” in Peru’s Ancash Region. Since coming to power in 2006,
Governor Cesar Alvarez has silenced critics and reportedly bought off local
media outlets. The March killing of one of his most vocal opponents, Ezequiel
Nolasco, has focused attention on Alvarez’s abuse of power, but federal
authorities are accused of ignoring evidence of his brutality.

Ultimas
Noticias has an in-depth report on the impact that scarcity of basic goods
in Venezuela has had on the country’s poor. According to the paper, scarcity
has forced residents of low-income areas around the capital city of Caracas to
flock in record numbers to private and state-managed supermarkets in the center
to stock up on food.

The Washington
Post highlights declining domestic support for Mexican President Enrique Peña
Nieto, even as his popularity abroad continues to grow. Analysts cited by the
Post claim that the president’s ambitious reform efforts have yet to benefit
most Mexicans, a factor which could hurt him and his PRI in July 2015 midterm
elections.

Sunday’s edition of Mexican daily El
Universal featured an investigation into the use of the controversial legal
mechanism known as the “arraigo,” which allows the pre-trial detention of
suspects for extended periods in order to allow investigators to build a case
against them. According to the paper, over 11 thousand people have been held
under this procedure, most for “crimes against health,” a term applied to drug-related
crimes. Fortunately for critics of the arraigo, there is evidence that the emphasis
on pretrial detention is falling. The first year of the Peña Nieto
administration saw a 64 percent drop in arraigo detentions compared to the last
year of President Calderon’s term in office, and a 22 percent drop compared to the
same period in his predecessor’s administration.

On Sunday the New
York Times published a front-page article on delayed development and
infrastructure projects in Brazil, which have languished due to a slowed
economy and bureaucratic inertia. While the government has defended state
funding on infrastructure projects despite the delays, critics say they point
to the problems with Brazil’s reliance on state-controlled companies and banks
to promote economic growth.

About The Author

Geoff Ramsey works as a communications officer for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). Before joining WOLA, Ramsey worked as a researcher for the Open Society Foundation’s Latin America Program. His most recent work involved monitoring civil society advocacy for and implementation of 2013 drug policy reforms in Uruguay, where he lived for nearly two years. Prior to that he spent two years living in Colombia and Brazil, where he researched and reported on regional insecurity issues for InSight Crime. Any views or opinions expressed in these posts are the sole responsibility of the author. Email: gramsey (at) thepanamericanpost (dot) com